Conventional thermomechanical processing of low‐carbon steels leads to a characteristic texture dominated by a strong <111>//ND fiber after recrystallization. The latter texture is beneficial for certain applications, such as deep drawing, while it is detrimental for others, including magnetic applications. With regard to magnetic applications, there is an ongoing effort to improve the final texture in ferromagnetic materials such as Fe–Si alloys used in transformers and electrical devices. Since the <100> directions are the axes of easy magnetization, it is essential to produce a texture that maximizes the volume fraction of grains with a <100> crystal direction in the flux direction. Bearing in mind that no phase transformation occurs during the processing of Fe–3%Si, plastic deformation and recrystallization are the prime controlling instruments to generate an appropriate microstructure and texture. In this study, the potential of severe plastic rolling deformation is considered. It is shown that, by strongly increasing the cold‐rolling reduction, the volume fraction of the unfavourable {111} component is significantly decreased and the specific {113}<136> component arises after annealing.

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In this article, an ultralow-carbon steel grade alloyed with Mn and Al has been investigated during a-c-a transformation annealing in vacuum. Typical texture and microstructure has evolved as a monolayer of grains on the outer surface of transformation-annealed sheets. This monolayer consists of \100[//ND and \110[//ND fibre, which is very different from the bulk texture components. The selective driving force is believed to reside in the anisotropy of surface energy at the metal-vapour interface. The grain morphology is very different from the bulk grains. Moreover, 30-40% of the grain boundary interfaces observed in the RD-TD surface sections are tilt incoherent \110[ 70.5°boundaries, which are known to exhibit reduced interface energy. Hence, the conclusion can be drawn that the orientation selection of surface grains is strongly controlled by minimization of the interface energy; both metal/vapour and metal/metal interfaces play a roll in this.